


Fox Hunt

by flyingfoxtopus



Series: Domesticated Foxes [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassin Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-09 08:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingfoxtopus/pseuds/flyingfoxtopus
Summary: Steve isn't the first super soldier Ayame's ever met. Her introduction the the Winter Solder didn't go quite as well.At sixteen Ayame is at the peak of her assassination career and hasn't yet discovered her love of academia. At least until she recognises someone who shouldn't be there on a mission.





	Fox Hunt

And Ayame's night had been going so well. There had been an evening mist, but it had dissipated before it made her gi damp. The Ambassador had hardly put up a fight. His mistress hadn’t been there so she hadn’t had to deal with collateral damage. The filling cabinet lock only had four tumblers. All the document she had been looking for were right where they should be. She hadn’t even tripped the alarm on the way out. Everything had gone exactly to plan.  
  
Which was what made her current predicament so irritating. The information had pointed to the Ambassador being more important than was obvious. But important enough to have the Winter Soldier as a bodyguard?  
  
If she had known the deadliest assassin of the last century was going to be here, she would have brought back up. Hell, if they’d known he was going to be here the aunts would have come themselves. They were very curious about the man who had surpassed the foxes' record.  
  
Although personally Ayame thought it was more likely to be a group of men rather than an individual. The aunts forgot that normal humans didn’t stay at fighting fit for 70 odd years. It was probably a title, passed down among the best killers Russia trained. Like the way the title of Fox Demon was passed down, but without the backing of the Aunts. That would explain the long dry stretches between kills. They were training a new 'Winter Soldier'.  
  
Not that either theory was doing a very good job of helping her get away just now. Focus silly girl. Intelligence processing is for when you’re safe not when you’re failing to run away from someone. How the hell was he keeping up with her? He had to be twice her weight easily and certainly he wasn’t as graceful. The two sides of his body didn’t seem to move in harmony. He had to work to haul himself over and around obstacles. But still those glowing green night vision goggles followed her on wards in the night.  
  
Four roofs until the river. She didn’t have to kill him without backup. Just get away. All she had to do was avoid dying long enough to get away. She dive-rolled across the gap to the next roof and came up running again. Dodging behind a chimney stack before he could line up a shot. He really was much closer than she would like. The only benefit was she was also inside the effective range or the rifle he was carrying, and he would need extra time to compensate if he wanted to get a clean shot on her.  
  
Dai's voice crackled over her earpiece. “Kit? Check in what’s your status?”  
  
“Little busy.” Amy look back at the top of the building. He was still following her. She whipped a kunai over her shoulder at him. “I’m going to be coming in hot.”  
The knife clattered against the roof. Damn. She'd missed. Again.  
  
“_Stop running little fox. You’re only making this harder on yourself._” The deep Russian made her shiver more than the cold could. It was rough from disuse, but there was something underlying it. A dark predatory growl that struck her more deeply than any blow ever had.  
  
The miss was disappointing. Not that scoring a hit would have changed all that much. Her first blade, thrown as soon as she had realised she had realised someone was perusing her, had lodged in this thigh. And he was just _ignoring_ it. He hadn’t even stopped to bandage the wound. There must be a trail of bloody footprints across the roofs of Prague.  
  
All her subsequent kunai had missed him by a hair’s breadth. Was this what it felt like when people shot at her? It was infuriating. No wonder so many of them lost their head. Another few misses and she’d be ready to scream herself. She took more time with her next throw. Stilling for a full breath to get her aim just right. Through the glass and into his eye. No one kept going when you took out an eye.  
  
The black metal blade struck his mask. Knocking it aside. Damn, a hit, but it hadn’t even bloodied him.  
  
Another jump and she made it to the last roof.  
  
On her next look back Amy froze. She knew those eyes. She had seen them in her brother’s history textbook. The lips too, although they had been curled in a roguish grin not a grimace in most of the photos. They couldn’t be the same. He was dead.  
  
She took a half step back. Teetering at the edge of the roof. Murky water swirling below her. They had to be the same eyes. Dai had teased her relentlessly for her crush. Had there been a child? Those eyes on another sniper were too much of a coincidence.  
  
The first bullet hit Amy’s shoulder, knocking her off balance. The second struck her ribs just below her arm.  
  
She fell backwards off the roof. Don’t die. That’s all she had to do. Just not die.  
  
*****  
  
The Winter Soldier peered over the edge of the roof. The fox girl was gone. Not even a ripple in the water where she should have struck. His orders were clear. He was to return to base if he lost or killed his target.  
  
He had never lost a target before. Not that he could remember. Hot sand blowing on his face. Red hair. Scared green eyes. _Otetse?_ The memory fragments meant something.  
  
There was a warning pain behind his left eye. He shied away from the memories. Better to not remember. He had to go in the chair when he remembered too much.  
  
*****  
  
The team sat anxiously around the open hatch in the bottom of the boat. Dai's knee bounced to work off the energy. He shouldn’t have let her go in alone. What did ‘coming in hot’ even mean in this context? A single pursuer? The entire constabulary? He should have made her communicate better all night.  
  
He looked up at Samurai who shrugged. Foxes were foxes. Ayame was the third he had worked with. They all tended to do things without explaining. All you could really do was hold on and try to keep up. She would fill them in when she felt the need.  
  
A hand emerged from the water.  
  
“Kit. Talk to me.” Dai hauled his cousin through the hatch. Red stained water pouring over his hands. Dark red. Whatever had happened it wasn’t good.  
  
“The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes.” Amy gasped clinging to Dai’s arm. She had to go back. She had to find him. She needed to know how he had survived. Sixty years. He had been dead for sixty years. Had been the Winter Soldier for sixty years? Did the timeline work out? When had the Winter Soldier appeared? Why hadn’t she paid more attention to world history. What good was memorising all the Shogun of the Kamakura period when she didn’t know anything _important._  
  
“How much blood have you lost?” Dai asked peeling back the layers of her gi. “Are you having any other hallucinations? Floating lights? Are you seeing Auras? Wait don’t answer that. Auras probably aren’t a symptom for you.”  
  
She waved his concern away. It was just a scratch... Two scratches. She was lightheaded because of the revelation, not blood loss. Not just blood loss. Why was the boat rocking this much? Were they on the open ocean or something?  
  
They couldn’t leave Prague. She needed to get back out there and find the Winter Soldier again. She needed to talk to him. Interrogate him. She had to find out how he had survived.  
“I’m not hallucinating. Just hook me up to a transfusion and stitch the wounds. I’ll be fine.” Amy took a deep breath. Or tried to. Her left side burned, and she almost passed out. Her lung was collapsing. She wasn’t going anywhere. “Okay maybe I’m not fine.”  
  
*****  
  
The rhythmic beeping grated on Ayame’s nerves. Couldn’t they turn that off. And why was the air so stale? She hated recycled air.  
  
Hospital. She was in a hospital. Her lung had collapsed. Then what? What day was it. Her side still hurt, but it was a full healing ache, not a sharp recently injured pain. She forced her eyes open a little. They were gritty and dry. An innocuous hospital room wavered into view. It’s blandness giving no hints and to where exactly she was.  
  
“I’m not dead then?” Amy grumbled, plucking at the cannulas in her nose.  
  
“Not yet. You gave Dai quite a scare though.” Came the familiar sound of her brother’s voice. Matt closed her hand over hers and pulled it away from her face. “Leave those in. You need oxygen.”  
Amy squinted against the bright lights. Those would have to go. They made her head hurt. “What are you doing in Eastern Europe?”  
  
“_You’re_ in California.” Matt shook his head. She was more out of it than he had thought. He would have thought his bright little sister would at least remember his deployment schedule and be able to figure it out from there. “They had to airlift you back to the states. Congratulations by the way. You’re allergic to penicillin.”  
  
Amy forced her hands to still, folding them neatly on the scratchy hospital blanket. That made sense. The urge to rip out all the itchy and uncomfortable tubes growing more persistent. She shoved it aside. Along with the hunger and thirst that were creeping in now that she was awake. Discomfort could wait. She had work to do. “When can I be back in the field? What did the doctors say?”  
  
“Aside from a lot of questions about why a sixteen-year-old girl was shot twice with a high-powered rifle?” Matt raised his eyebrows. She had to know what this looked like. They had loads of optics and procedural issues to work through before she would be allowed to go back to Japan. Let alone before she could go back to... Whatever it was she had been doing before she got shot. And that didn’t even include recovery time. “You’re going to be on bed rest for at least six months.”  
  
“Six months!” Amy sat up indignant. She couldn’t not do anything for _six months_. She could barely stand being idle for six hours. And especially not now. Not when something _interesting_ was finally happening.  
  
Matt set a hand on her head and pushed her back down. “Take it easy Kit. You need to let your body heal. We’ll find you something you can do laying down to stop you from getting bored.”  
  
Amy growled internally. She needed to be out there. Track the Winter Soldier down. Question him until he told her everything. Sparks flashed between her fingers. He _would_ tell her everything.  
  
Six months. Did people realize how cold a trail got in six months? Cold trail. There was a lot of cold trail here. 60 years of cold trail. If she couldn’t start at this end maybe she could start at the other and catch him somewhere in the middle. “Do you have your history textbook? The one you were studying last time I was home for Christmas?”  
  
Matt frowned at the sudden question. “_Early Advanced Warfare Techniques in the European Theatre_? Yeah I think it is still in my room at the parents’ house.”  
  
“I need it.” Amy’s mind was racing. He had been declared MIA during the war. She couldn’t remember the situation surrounding it. But he had been Captain America’s best friend, there had to be a lot of research around it. She made a mental list of what she had to do. Find the last location of James Buchanan Barnes. Find the first appearance of the Winter Soldier. Figure out what happened in between. Find where was now. Find out how they turned him into a killer.  
  
“Kit, that is a fourth-year history textbook from Westpoint.” Matt sigh. Always jumping in at the deep end. Could his baby sister not just be normal for a few months? Or even a few hours? No, she wanted to read a high-level textbook while she should be trying to rest and recover. “I don’t know if… hang on your doctor is here.”  
  
Doctor May Ito was a petite Japanese American woman with big almond eyes and what turned out to be a wicked sense of humour. She always addressed Amy directly and politely. She never spoke down to her, but did check that she had understood everything and didn’t need clarification or had any questions. Amy didn’t have many questions. Not once she had been allowed to read her charts. She had learned American medical notation years ago. Dai was better at it, but she could get by. It wasn’t like she was suffering from anything particularly exotic. He attention wandered a little once the doctor started talking about recovery times. She intended to beat those projections anyway.  
  
Matt was very attentive. He asked questions and hung on the Doctors every word. His sister noted the attention. Watching them an interpreting their body language was more interesting than plans for physiotherapy consultations she had no intention of going to.  
  
The doctor left them with a promise to check in again at the end of her shift. Which Amy found especially interesting since surgeon usually stopped following a case once it was clear the patient didn’t need more surgery.  
  
The door clicked shut behind her. Matt let out a long slow breath. Amy’s progress was good. Her scans were showing recovery, and her lungs sounded good. She was responding to the arithromycin and her labs were showing her fighting the infection.  
  
Matt watched her all the way to the door. He really didn’t know what they would have done with out her. She had been so good to them since Amy had been admitted here. He felt like she came to check on them every break she got. Or maybe it was just that he noticed her checking more than the other doctors.  
  
“You like her!” Amy squealed gaping at her brother. She had met a couple of Matt’s girlfriends in the past. The had all bored her instantly, which meant they had all bored him before long. Doctor Ito didn’t bore her. If she could handle Matt’s semi nomadic lifestyle that would leave her on her own for long stretches of time, she would be perfect for him.  
  
“What? No!” He squeaked. He was a decorated Navy SEAL. He didn’t squeak.  
  
Matt cleared his throat, he was calm, he was not raising to the bate. Amy might have been on more combat missions than he had, but she was still his kid sister. “I don’t. I was just being polite. She’s a good doctor. Very attentive.”  
  
“Mhmm. Right. She likes you.” Amy said settling back against her pillows with a knowing smirk. The pretty doctor had her brother wrapped around her little finger and she hadn’t even been on a date with him yet.  
  
“You think?” Matt said brightening up. He hadn’t considered that the brilliant doctor might return the sentiment.  
  
*****  
  
For the next three weeks Amy stayed in bed. Reading and making notes from her brother’s history textbooks while he made sure she rested and flirted with the pretty doctor. Amy had even managed to shoo them both out of the room long enough to get a coffee together with the promise that she would sleep while they were gone. Her parents took turns sleeping in her room.  
  
Midway through the third week Doctor Ito, May as Matt had started calling her, declared that she was ready to be discharged although she was still supposed to rest and avoid straining her side.  
  
“So, Kit. What do you want to do now?” Matt asked perching on the foot of her bed. Their parents were outside explaining once again why they didn’t need social services to check up on Ayame once they got her home to Virginia, and why it was fine that she was going to travel internationally unaccompanied before she was supposed to according to the doctor’s.  
  
He only hoped that whatever she had planned at least _sounded_ as safe as they were making out her life was. He knew full well that their parents could make all the promises in the world and Ayame would go ahead and ignore them if it suited her. She hadn’t listened to their parents since she was ten. Auntie Sakura was the only one who could really keep her in hand. No matter how obedient she pretended to be.  
  
Amy pursed her lips thoughtfully. She would be banned from field work for moths if she went home. And the answers she was looking for weren’t back in Japan anyway. If she was right Winter Soldier wasn’t a title passed from one killer to another to maintain a Russian ghost story. He was an American soldier. Missing and presumed dead during the second world war. She wanted to know more about this new ageless assassin. If she wasn’t allowed hunt him in the field there was only one way to track him. “I want to get a History degree.”  
  
“History?” Matt frowned. He had always thought when the time came, she would go for something more related to her work. Like a medical degree. Or applied mathematics. Economics even. Amy had never shown any particular interest in the past. Especially not in the Eurocentric whitewashed version of the past that was taught at an undergrad level in the west. Thanks to the Aunts she was to conscious of the inconsistencies and changes. Even if she did sometimes fail to see her own bias.  
  
“At Oxford, I think.” The English kept impeccable records, they had copies of pretty much all the howling commando documents as well as extensive archives on the KGB from the cold war. The early years of the cold war seemed to be when the Winter Soldier was most active, so that was where she needed to look. She would need access to the American records too, and maybe the Russian if she could get her hands on those, although they were less likely to be accurate. “Then maybe Harvard for my second degree.”  
  
“Second degree?” She hadn’t even started a first degree and was already thinking about a second one? Not that he doubted her ability to complete as many as she wanted. Amy had yet to find a challenge she couldn’t overcome. With the possible exception of the man who had shot her.  
  
Amy cocked her head to one side. Her brother had more experience in the field of higher education than she did. Maybe he knew something she didn’t. It was always good to look for outside intelligence. Maybe she didn’t need to be more than a student to get access to the sort of research she wanted to do. “You think I’ll only need one?”  
  
Matt sighed. His sister could be like a dog with a rabbit. It would be better to just let her chase down this idea until she was satisfied. Otherwise she would drive them all crazy. “I think I will defer to you on that.”  
  
*****  
  
Oxford had been a dead end. An interesting dead end. But a dead end. That was all right. She would find him. It would just take time. Time, she had. Time for Harvard, and another degree. And I her spare time. She would keep planning better operations than anyone else. It meant only seeing Dai on long weekends and in the field, but it was worth it. Everything was so _interesting_. She was almost certainly going to need more than two degrees. To get everything she needed she was probably going to end up with a couple of master’s degrees and at least two doctorates. Much to the chagrin of the powers that be in Japan.  
  
The clan council wanted her to return to Katsura and her work. Amy didn’t _want_ to go back to her old work though. Her old work was boring. They weren’t even suggesting she should do more political work. They wanted her back tracking drug dealers and human trafficking, like she was still a child. They might say it was because they wanted her out of harm’s way while they figured out how they had missed the Winter Soldier being active around their target. But she knew the truth. They thought she had failed. They wanted to put her back in the little box with all the average people.  
  
She didn’t belong in that box. She hadn’t failed. She just hadn’t had enough information to succeed. That’s what these degrees were for. Information gathering. And learning different forms of strategy.  
  
The best generals in history were her teachers now, and she had the benefit of hindsight to help with their lessons. Everything they had done right. Everything they had done wrong. Everything they had missed. What information they had and when they had it. Most interestingly how they had used their abnormal troops and to what effect. One or two abnormals used to good effect could turn the tide of battle better than an entire company of regular troops. Likewise miss handling abnormals could lose a war. As far as Amy could tell no one had really looked at those specific effects. Which baffled her, they were _fascinating_.  
  
There were lots of examples of abnormals in history if you knew what you were looking for. Not just the famous example of Captain America and his team of howling commandos, although she was interested in them. The Winter Soldier. Thor. Loki. Antman. The Black Panther in Africa. The entire Red Room program. Now Ironman. There were others to, older ones that had been written off as myth the way her family had. Contemporary examples that were better at staying out of the records. The fingerprints were there if you knew where to look. Amy was going to find them all.  
“Is this seat taken?” A velvet soft voice interrupted her thoughts.  
  
Amy looked up from her notebook. Her doodle of the street layout in Belmopan half finished. It was hard to be mad about this interruption. Not if this was the man doing the interrupting. He was cute. He was very cute. Side swept dark hair. Piercing brown eyes. And he was looking at her face. Strange how such a small detail made a man more attractive. Belize could wait. “Not at all be my guest.”  
  
“Jun'ichi Takahashi.” He extended a hand with a dazzling smile.  
Amy accepted his hand delicately. “Ayame.”


End file.
